Traditionally, when an adult travels with an infant from their home, it is essential to pack and carry numerous bulky and cumbersome baby products. In particular, it is necessary to pack various items to anticipate the infant's meal, such as, sterile baby bottles, one or more sterile water-filled bottles and various containers of a baby formula powder, a measurement scooper, a bib and baby wipes. The burden of having to carry all of these items to feed the infant when they are hungry (which includes mixing a measured amount of water with a predetermined amount of baby formula powder, using a scoop to put the powder inside the nursing bottle when the user needed to feed the infant), makes traveling anywhere outside of the home discouragingly complicated and an unsatisfying experience.
When baby formula is mixed with water, the recommended time for consumption is within about an hour. Thereafter, it was recommended that the remainder of the formula beverage be discarded to prevent the introduction of bacteria and/or other harmful germs to an infant. (See http://www.ehow.com/how—2514_prepare-ready-mix.html).
In an attempt to extend the use of formula by keeping the ingredients separated until use, various bottle designs have been proposed which have been unsuccessful in providing a simple bottle design that stores, mixes and easily dispenses the beverage.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,264,007 illustrates a top mounted container to hold a small quantity of a second material at the opening of a bottle. This design brings extra and unnecessary parts and requires to be removed from the main container to allow the resulting mixed liquid from being dispensed.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,419,445 illustrates a very complicated baby bottle including an extra cartridge assembly, requiring some extra skills to put all the parts together and definitely increasing the complication related to feeding a baby in a daily regular basis which is repeated up to twelve times per day; as well of other drawbacks related to the use of this design.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,634,714 illustrates a primary container with a removable stemmed plug, which introduces a very high risk of injury for a baby and the possibility of an obstruction while two ingredients are mixing and/or dispensing; as well of other drawbacks found on this design.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,692,644, 5,794,802, 5,863,126, and 6,257,428, illustrate other examples of a very complicated devices requiring many extra parts, requiring extra care and capabilities for assembly and disassembly and in some cases representing an injury risk if these devices are used to feed babies. All this and other drawbacks complicate the regular use of a baby bottle, in which a parent is required to load liquid and powdered formula, assemble the bottle, feed the baby and wash these devices up to twelve times every single day.
For at least these reasons, the above devices fail to solve the problem of efficiently storing, mixing and dispensing of a formula beverage.